Category Archives: Google

Google, News, Services

Google Acquires Orbitera

Google has recently announced the purchase of Orbitera, which will improve Google’s enterprise service sector and allows Google to become a stronger competitor against companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. While terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, TechCrunch estimates that it closed for about $100 million.

orb

Orbitera CEO Marcin Kurc will continue to operate the company as a separate entity and will continue to support existing customers. Orbitera’s technology will improve support of software vendors on Google’s Cloud Platform.

 

This acquisition marks a great addition to Google, as Orbitera has already launched upwards of 60,000 enterprise stacks, including Adobe and Oracle. Orbitera focuses on four parts of constructing cloud marketplaces: billing and cost optimization, marketplace and catalogs, packaging and provisioning, and trials and lead management. This acquisition also improves Google in terms of personnel and perspective, as CEO Marcin Kurc had previously worked at Amazon Web Services.

 

About Orbitera:

Based in West Hollywood, California, Orbitera was co-founded in 2011 by Firas Bushnaq and Brian Singer and had accumulated $2 million in venture funding. The company was founded with the thought of breaking the mold in which enterprise software is sold and bought by making this process easier, and thus the Orbitera Cloud Commerce Platform was created. Since establishment, Orbitera has launched upward of 60,000 enterprise stacks.

 

Comments:

Nan Boden, Google’s head of global technology partners: “Orbitera has built a strong ecosystem of enterprise software vendors delivering software to multiple clouds. This acquisition is not only meant to improve the support of software vendors on Google Cloud Platform, but it also aims to reinforce Google’s support for the multi-cloud world.”

 

Boden: “The current model for the deploying, managing and billing of cloud-based software does not easily fit the way today’s modern enterprises operate. Orbitera automates many of the processes associated with billing, packaging and pricing optimization for leading businesses and ISVs (independent software vendors) supporting customers running in the cloud. More than 60,000 enterprise stacks have been launched on Orbitera.”
Orbitera CEO Marcin Kurc: “When we first started Orbitera, our mission was to enable frictionless sales of cloud-based enterprise software and services. Becoming part of the Google Cloud Platform team allows us to continue and accelerate toward this goal…. We will continue to deliver the products and services our customers rely on with the added scale that Google provides.”

The post Google Acquires Orbitera appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

AWS, Google, IaaS, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, Public Cloud

Google backs multi-cloud strategy with Orbitera purchase

Googlers having funGoogle has confirmed the acquisition of cloud commerce platform Orbitera, marking an alternative strategy to its main cloud rivals AWS and Microsoft, reports Telecoms.com.

The Orbitera platform acts as a marketplace for cloud solutions which simplifies the way in which customers search and purchase products. The platform currently supports deploying applications on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but not currently Google Cloud Platform, though the company said it would continue to support software deployments on platforms other than its own.

As the practise of cloud computing has become normalized throughout the industry, multi-cloud strategies have become more common as enterprise organizations aim to spread workloads to reduce risk. It would appear Google are using the move to multi-cloud environments to further establish its platform and build credibility in the industry. Although Google is generally ranked in the top three cloud providers worldwide, the gap between Microsoft and AWS, and Google in third place has been widening slightly in recent quarters.

Microsoft and AWS do also support multi-cloud propositions, though the majority of the marketing messages are focused on standardizing on a single platform. It would seem Google are moving to a position which would be more aligned with customer trends in the cloud ecosystem.

“At Google, we partner closely with our enterprise customers and software providers to ensure their transition to the cloud is as simple and seamless as possible,” said Nan Boden, Head of Global Technology Partners, on the company’s blog. “We recognize that both enterprise customers and ISVs want to be able to use more than one cloud provider and have a way to conduct product trials and proofs of concept before building a full production deployment, all using their trusted SIs (System Integrators), resellers and normal sales cycles.”

The deal ties in well with another acquisition which the internet giant made in recent months. Back in November the company acquired enterprise development platform start-up bebop, which some industry commentators believed was a move to lure former VMware CEO Diane Greene to head a new business-oriented cloud service. The bebop business created a set of tools which simplified the process for enterprise organizations to build cloud apps. Combining Orbitera with Bebop could potentially form the central theme of a new marketing message for Google; simplifying the cloud.

Google are still playing catch-up with cloud rivals AWS and Microsoft, though it does have lofty ambitions. Last year, Urs Hölzle, SVP for Technical Infrastructure, stated he believes the cloud business has the potential to exceed advertising revenues for the internet giant, which stood at $19 billion for the last quarter. Although the company has been growing in the cloud space, its competitors are expanding at a faster pace. Taking Microsoft and AWS on at their own game does not appear to be working, though a new strategy have the potential to act as a differentiator, as it does match customer trends moving towards multi-cloud strategies.

AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM continue cloud market dominance

male and female during the run of the marathon raceNew research from Synergy states while the cloud market is growing at a healthy rate quarter-by-quarter, the four dominate cloud brands are continuing to pull away from the pack, controlled more market share month-by-month, reports Telecoms.com.

Data from Synergy Research claims the four companies now collectively control more than 50% of worldwide cloud market share (IaaS, PaaS and Hosted Private Cloud), with AWS maintaining its lead at the top of the leader board controlling almost a third of worldwide share. Over the course of the second quarter of 2016, the top four grew revenues by 68%, while the next 20 players, who roughly account for a quarter of the market share, grew 41%. All other vendors in this space grew by a collective 27%.

“In a variety of ways Amazon and the other big three players have distanced themselves from the competition in this market and continue to widen the gap,” said John Dinsdale, Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “What marks them out as different is their global presence, marketing muscle, ability to fund huge investments in hyper scale data centres and, in most cases, a determination to succeed in the market.

“The ranking of the next 20 largest cloud providers features some interesting companies, with Alibaba and Oracle growing particularly strongly, but they are all starting from a long way behind Google, which is itself growing by well over 100% per year and yet remains only a sixth the size of Amazon.”

Although AWS is still the dominant market player, growth is slowing. Google and Microsoft both posted growth figures of more than 100%, though it is far too soon to write AWS’ obituary, as it still controls more than three times the market share of its nearest rival, Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft has been going through a number of transformation projects in recent years, and while the market share for cloud shows it will still be some time before it catches AWS, the team are finding success in other arenas. According to additional research from Synergy, in the data centre infrastructure market, HPE and Cisco may be leading the way for public and private cloud hardware, but Microsoft now accounts for just over 40% of cloud software share, with VMWare its nearest competitor at roughly 20%. The research including share for servers, server OS, storage, networking, network security and virtualization software.

“With spend on cloud services growing by over 50% per year and spend on SaaS growing by over 30%, there is little surprise that cloud operator capex continues to drive strong growth in public cloud infrastructure,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Chief Analyst. “But on the enterprise data centre side too we continue to see a big swing towards spend on private cloud infrastructure as companies seek to benefit from more flexible and agile IT technology. The transition to cloud still has a long way to go.”

AI, fibre, Financial Results, Google, News & Analysis

Google grows (again) but ‘Other Bets’ cost the giant $1bn

GoogleGoogle has reported its Q2 numbers, continuing a strong run of performances within the technology industry, though efforts to diversify its overall business are not paying off just yet, reports Telecoms.com.

The Alphabet brand was announced last year, with aim of allowing the team to invest in other projects more freely, without being impeded by the advertising business. It would appear the management team are not afraid to throw R&D money at its innovation team as it searches for another billion-dollar business, as the ‘Other Bets’ segment, which includes Google Fibre and the autonomous cars projects, accounted for an operating loss of $859 million. Revenues did grow to $185 million, up 150% on the same quarter in 2015, though this number was made almost insignificant by the $19 billion generated in the advertising business.

The technology industry on the whole has been providing strong numbers over the last couple of weeks, though there has been a question as to whether two advertising giants can co-exist. With Facebook reporting significant growth yesterday, advertising revenues across the period increased 63% year-on-year to $6.2 billion, these numbers were dwarfed by Google, perhaps demonstrating there is potential for both organizations to share advertising revenues, which are decreasing in value, and grow healthily.

With regard to the dwindling value of advertising revenues, Google would appear to be combatting this with volume. CFO Ruth Porat highlighted the mobile search capabilities were the primary driver behind the year-on-year growth, though the desktop and tablet search did also grow.

Numbers such as these will grab headlines, meaning it can be easy to forget about the Google cloud business, one of the top priorities for the Alphabet business moving forward.

On the same day which AWS reported revenues of $2.9 billion for the quarter, Google’s cloud business also demonstrated solid growth. Although the numbers are not specific, the ‘Other’ revenues segment which includes the cloud business, and other services such as Google play, accounting for $2.1 billion through the three month period, an increase of 33% on Q2 2015.

“Many tremendous digital experiences are being built in the cloud today, and businesses are working to take advantage of the cloud as part of their digital transformation,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “We’ve been integrating our cloud and apps products to create more unified solutions for companies large and small, and these efforts are paying off.”

Following on from Pichai’s previous comments on the role of artificial intelligence on the Google cloud platform, and the wider Google business, its importance has been reiterated once again. Machine learning is being prioritized as the differentiator for Google in a competitive technology market, and only last week the team introduced two cloud machine learning APIs for speech and natural language to help enterprise customers convert audio to text and easily understand the structure and sentiment of the text in a variety of languages.

In terms of footprint, the team are not done growing yet. At the end of last month, Google and friends completed work on a new trans-Pacific submarine cable system, which will help the team launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo. Back in March, the team confirmed it would be investing heavily in expansion of its cloud footprint with 12 new data centres around the world by the end of 2017.

AWS has previously stated it intends to break the $10 billion barrier in cloud revenues during 2016, though Google may not be that far behind. With its history of not being afraid to invest, and the growth numbers which have been witnessed over the last few quarters, Google could be set to accelerate.

Avanto, Google, Media, News & Analysis, TV

Google adds media capabilities with Anvato purchase

Google AvantoGoogle has bolstered its capabilities in the video streaming market through acquiring video platform Anvato which will join its cloud business unit.

Anvato provides a software platform that fully automates the encoding, editing, publishing and secure distribution of video content across multiple platforms. The acquisition will improve Google’s capabilities to recruit media companies to its cloud storage business, in the long-term quest to gain ground on Microsoft Azure and AWS in the cloud market segment.

“Anvato’s Media Content Platform, which counts many large media companies as customers, will complement our efforts to enable scalable media processing and workflows in the cloud,” said Belwadi Srikanth, Senior Product Manager at Google. “The cloud is transforming the way video content is created and distributed to an array of connected devices, as well as the way users engage with this content. And in recent years, the adoption of over-the-top (OTT) technologies has emerged as a critical platform for delivering rich audio, video and other media via the Internet.”

Offerings such as Anvato’s have been pushed to prominence in recent years as more video content moves into the OTT category. Google already counts a number of media outlets as customers, including Sky News and Spotify, though the continuing OTT trend will generate more demand for cloud services. The Anvato purchase will add several other media heavy hitters to the customer list such as NBCUniversal, Univision, Scripps Networks, Fox Sports, Media General.

“We are thrilled to bring together Anvato with the scale and power of Google Cloud Platform to provide the industry’s best offering for OTT and mobile video,” said Alper Turgut, CEO at Avanto. “This will allow us to supercharge our capabilities, accelerate the pace of innovation, and deliver tomorrow’s video solutions faster, enabling media companies to better serve their customers.”

AI, Artificial intelligence, Google, Image Recognition, News & Analysis

Google adds image recognition to growing AI portfolio

Googlers having funGoogle has continued its charge on the artificial intelligence market through purchasing French image recognition startup Moodstocks, reports Telecoms.com.

Moodstocks, founded in 2008, develops machine-learning based image recognition technology for smartphones, which has been described by developers as the ‘Shazam for images’. Financials of the agreement have not been confirmed to date.

“Ever since we started Moodstocks, our dream has been to give eyes to machines by turning cameras into smart sensors able to make sense of their surroundings,” Moodstock said on its website. “Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to join forces with Google in order to deploy our work at scale. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few weeks.”

Artificial intelligence is one of the focal points of the Google strategy moving forward, which was confirmed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai during the company’s recent earnings call, though the focus can be dated back to the $625 million DeepMind acquisition in 2014. Although DeepMind is arguably the most advanced AI system in the industry, Telecoms.com readers recently confirmed in a poll Google was the leader in the AI segment, it has seemingly been playing catch up with the likes of Watson and AWS whose offerings have been in the public eye for a substantially longer period of time.

The recognition tools are most likely to be incorporated into the Android operating system, though Moodstocks customers will be able to continue to use the service until the end of their subscription. Moodstocks will be incorporated into Google’s R&D centre in France, where the team will work alongside engineers who are focusing on the development of Youtube and Chrome, two offerings where there could be a link to the Moodstocks technology.

“Many Google services use machine learning (or machine learning) to make them simpler and more useful in everyday life – such as Google Translate, Smart Reply Inbox, or the Google app,” said Vincent Simonet, Head of R&D centre of Google’s French unit. “We have made great strides in terms of visual recognition: now you can search in Google Pictures such as ‘party’ or ‘beach’ and the application will offer you good pictures without you and have never needed to categorize them manually.”

Last month, Google also announced it was expanding its machine research team by opening a dedicated office in Zurich. The team will focus on three areas specifically, machine intelligence, natural language processing & understanding, as well as machine perception.

Elsewhere in the industry, Twitter completed the acquisition of Magic Pony last month reportedly for $150 million. Magic Pony, which offers visual processing technology, was one of the more public moves made by the social media network, which could be seen as unusual as the platform lends itself well to the implementation of AI. Microsoft also announced the purchase of Wand Labs, building on the ‘Conversation-as-a-Platform’ proposition put forward by CEO Satya Nadella at Build 2016.

AI, Android, Artificial intelligence, Google, Machine learning, News & Analysis

Image recognition startup joins Google in France

Googlers having funGoogle has continued its charge on the artificial intelligence market through purchasing French image recognition startup Moodstocks, reports Telecoms.com.

Moodstocks, founded in 2008, develops machine-learning based image recognition technology for smartphones, which has been described by developers as the ‘Shazam for images’. Financials of the agreement have not been confirmed to date.

“Ever since we started Moodstocks, our dream has been to give eyes to machines by turning cameras into smart sensors able to make sense of their surroundings,” Moodstock said on its website. “Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to join forces with Google in order to deploy our work at scale. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few weeks.”

Artificial intelligence is one of the focal points of the Google strategy moving forward, which was confirmed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai during the company’s recent earnings call, though the focus can be dated back to the $625 million DeepMind acquisition in 2014. Although DeepMind is arguably the most advanced AI system in the industry, Telecoms.com readers recently confirmed in a poll Google was the leader in the AI segment, it has seemingly been playing catch up with the likes of Watson and AWS whose offerings have been in the public eye for a substantially longer period of time.

The recognition tools are most likely to be incorporated into the Android operating system, though Moodstocks customers will be able to continue to use the service until the end of their subscription. Moodstocks will be incorporated into Google’s R&D centre in France, where the team will work alongside engineers who are focusing on the development of Youtube and Chrome, two offerings where there could be a link to the Moodstocks technology.

“Many Google services use machine learning (or machine learning) to make them simpler and more useful in everyday life – such as Google Translate, Smart Reply Inbox, or the Google app,” said Vincent Simonet, Head of R&D centre of Google’s French unit. “We have made great strides in terms of visual recognition: now you can search in Google Pictures such as ‘party’ or ‘beach’ and the application will offer you good pictures without you and have never needed to categorize them manually.”

Last month, Google also announced it was expanding its machine research team by opening a dedicated office in Zurich. The team will focus on three areas specifically, machine intelligence, natural language processing & understanding, as well as machine perception.

Elsewhere in the industry, Twitter completed the acquisition of Magic Pony last month reportedly for $150 million. Magic Pony, which offers visual processing technology, was one of the more public moves made by the social media network, which could be seen as unusual as the platform lends itself well to the implementation of AI. Microsoft also announced the purchase of Wand Labs, building on the ‘Conversation-as-a-Platform’ proposition put forward by CEO Satya Nadella at Build 2016.

Broadband, Google, News & Analysis, wireless

Google Fiber adds Miami and Boston to roster

GoogleGoogle has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Webpass to boost its Google Fiber business unit and add to its wireless broadband ambitions, reports Telecoms.com.

The acquisition builds on an area of innovation which the Google Fiber team have been investigating. Webpass has paired its fiber network with wireless technology, an idea which the Google team have been testing in Kansas City earlier this year. Back in April, Google was given approval to test its 3.5 GHz wireless broadband capabilities using antennas on light poles and various other structures, in and around the Kansas City area. The FCC commented the innovation could create a new flavour of wifi or even an LTE Unlicensed band.

Webpass was founded in 2003, and claims to have customers in the “tens of thousands”, though these are primarily apartment blocks and business users, two demographics which are likely to be of interest to Google. Webpass has focused its sights on business users in recent months, providing services in the range of 100 megabits per second to one gigabit per second, and also operates in two markets Google Fiber which has no exposure; Miami and Boston.

“Google Fiber’s resources will enable Webpass to grow faster and reach many more customers than we could as a standalone company,” said Charles Barr, President at Webpass. “I’m very much looking forward to this next chapter for Webpass, and let me take this opportunity to once again say thank you to all of our loyal customers. We are thrilled to be on this journey together.”

While the deal is still subject to the customary approval process from regulators, it is the first acquisition for the Google Fiber business, indicating the company’s intensions in the arena. The Google Fiber business has been growing at a healthy rate in the last 18 months, though the addition of Webpass will give the company traction in five significant markets in the US, including major cities such as San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Chicago, and Boston.

AWS, Google, Hotels.com, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Public Cloud

The rest of the world is catching up with AWS – Hotels.com CIO

Speaking at Cloud and DevOps World, Hotels.com CIO Theirry Bedos outlined some of the cloud industry’s growing trends, including the erosion of AWS’ dominant position, reports Telecoms.com.

The growth of the cloud industry has been well documented over recent months, as numerous studies and surveys dominate web searches claiming adoption rates are accelerating. While it is still debatable if cloud has penetrated the mainstream market, according to Bedos, what is clear is the industry is heading that direction; there’s no turning around now.

“The world is becoming fluffier and fluffier,” said Bedos. “There are countless studies and surveys on the internet which show the cloud is becoming more popular and widely used, which is only good for the industry. AWS is still the number one player in the market, but the rest are starting to catch up now. This is one of the most interesting trends which we are seeing.”

As with the acceptance and adoption of any new technology, there are bound to be a number of underlying trends. For Bedos, one of the more interesting of those trends is the acceptance there is another way aside from AWS.

While AWS is still considered the leader in the industry, controlling notably more market share than other cloud providers, the lead is slimming. Microsoft and Google have both been prominent over the course of the last 18 months in bolstering their cloud capabilities, and this has not gone unnoticed by the industry. Although cloud adoption rates are increasing, AWS is getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie as customers are taking alternatives into consideration.

This should not be considered a major surprise, as this is a trend which has been witnessed with the growth of other technology sub-sectors. Back in the early 2000s, Netscape’s web browser was once dominant in terms of usage share, but lost most of that share to Internet Explorer during the so-called first ‘Browser War’. Bedos highlighted Netscape was first to market, and enjoyed that position for some time until the proposition became normalized and competition grew. This is the same trend AWS is undertaking currently.

“I’m not saying AWS will disappear in the same way Netscape did, but we’re going to see other players chip away at their market share,” said Bedos. That said, the increased competition and drive to acquire new customers could see the balance of power shift towards the consumer.

On top of the increased competition, Bedos also commented on the USPs of the individual cloud providers themselves. Buyers generally buy for a specific reason and these USPs in the cloud provider’s offerings is starting to fund the trend of multi-cloud environments in the enterprise business. Why choose when you can have the best of multiple cloud worlds? For Bedos, this is driving the trend of interoperability. Before too long moving workloads and data sets between different cloud environments will be a simple task, as vendors appreciate a lock-in situation will negatively impact their own business. Co-operation could potentially be the new battle ground.

AWS will continue; they are continuing to innovate and have the backing of one of the worlds’ most recognizable brands. However, increased competition, as well as the tendency of buyers to prefer a multi-cloud proposition, will see a more even playing field, and the bargaining power of these deals potentially leaning towards the consumer.

AI, Artificial intelligence, Google, Machine learning, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Twitter

Machine learning front and centre of R&D for Microsoft and Google

Dear Future Im Ready, message on paper, smart phone and coffee on tableMicrosoft and Google have announced plans to expand their machine learning capabilities, through acquisition and new research offices respectively, reports Telecoms.com.

Building on the ‘Conversation-as-a-Platform’ proposition put forward by CEO Satya Nadella at Build 2016, the Microsoft team has announced plans to acquire Wand Labs. The purchase will add weight to the ‘Conversation-as-a-Platform’ strategy, as well as supporting innovation ambitions for Bing intelligence.

“Wand Labs’ technology and talent will strengthen our position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence, where we bring together the power of human language with advanced machine intelligence,” said David Ku, Corporate Vice President of the Information Platform Group on the company’s official blog. “It builds on and extends the power of the Bing, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms to empower developers everywhere.”

More specifically, Wand Labs adds expertise in semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces, to the Microsoft engineering team. The ambition of the overarching project is to make the customers experience more seamless by harnessing human language in an artificial environment.

Microsoft’s move into the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning has not been a smooth ride to date, though this has not seemed to hinder investment. Back in March, the company’s AI inspired Twitter account Tay went into melt-down mode, though the team pushed forward, updating its Cortana Intelligence Suite and releasing its Skype Bot Platform. Nadella has repeatedly highlighted artificial intelligence and machine learning is the future for the company, stating at Build 2016:

“As an industry, we are on the cusp of a new frontier that pairs the power of natural human language with advanced machine intelligence. At Microsoft, we call this Conversation-as-a-Platform, and it builds on and extends the power of the Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms to empower developers everywhere.”

Google’s efforts in the machine learning world have also been pushed forward this week, as the team announced dedicated machine learning research based in the Zurich offices, on its blog. The team will focus on three areas specifically, machine intelligence, natural language processing & understanding, as well as machine perception.

Like Microsoft, Google has prioritized artificial intelligence and machine learning, though both companies will be playing catch-up with the likes of IBM and AWS, whose AI propositions have been in the market for some time. Back in April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in the company’s earnings call “overall, I do think in the long run, I think we will evolve in computing from a mobile first to an AI first world,” outlining the ambitions of the team.

Google itself already has a number of machine learning capabilities incorporated in its product portfolio, those these could be considered as relatively rudimentary. Translate, Photo Search and SmartReply for Inbox already contains aspects of machine learning, though the team are targeting more complex and accurate competencies.

Elsewhere, Twitter has announced on their blog advertisers will now be able to utilize emoji keyword targeting for Twitter Ads. This new feature uses emoji activity as a signal of a person’s mood or mind set, allowing advertisers to more effectively communicate marketing messages minimizing the potential for backlash of disgruntled twitter users. Although the blog does not state the use of machine learning competencies, it does leave the opportunity for future innovation in the area.